BRECKENRIDGE, Texas (AP) — A Texas man died after going into cardiac arrest when he was attacked by an aggressive swarm of bees outside his home, authorities said.
Thomas Hicks, 70, was mowing his lawn Monday when he was repeatedly stung by the bees outside his home in Breckenridge, about 130 miles west of Dallas, authorities said.
The Breckenridge Fire Department said first responders faced “very aggressive bee activity” when they arrived at the home.
Medics and firefighters attempted emergency care but Hicks died, the fire department said.
Hicks’ wife, Zoni Hicks, told TV station KTAB that she had been out grocery shopping when she returned to find her husband screaming and covered in bees.
“You couldn’t even see his back and his whole head — he was just covered,” she said.
Zoni Hicks was also stung repeatedly and she was treated and released from a hospital.
The hive was located inside a tree and firefighters killed the bees by spraying foam onto them, authorities said.
A Man Found 15,000 Bees in His Car After Grocery Shopping
THE NEW YORK TIME – An off-duty firefighter in Las Cruces, N.M., whose hobby is beekeeping, safely removed the swarm from the man’s car in an Albertsons supermarket parking lot.
He had just finished grocery shopping, but a New Mexico man got much more than he bargained for when he returned to his car in the store’s parking lot: A swarm of 15,000 honey bees had taken over the back seat.
The man, whose name was not released, had left a window down in a Buick while he made a 10-minute stop at an Albertsons supermarket on Sunday afternoon in Las Cruces, N.M., the authorities said.
It wasn’t until he had started to drive away that he noticed that something was amiss, according to the Las Cruces Fire Department.
“Then he turned back and looked and like was, ‘Holy Cow,’ ” Jesse Johnson, an off-duty firefighter and paramedic whose hobby is beekeeping, said of the man’s reaction in an interview on Wednesday. “He called 911 because he didn’t know what to do.”
Mr. Johnson, 37, a 10-year member of the Fire Department and a father of two, said he had just finished a family barbecue when he got the call from the Fire Department and figured that he could safely remove and relocate the bees to his property.
“I’ll do anything to keep people from killing the bees,” he said.
It’s common in the spring for colonies of bees to split, with a swarm following a queen to another location, according to Mr. Johnson.
He suggested that the bees, which collectively weighed about 3½ pounds, might have come from a parapet, gutter system or home in a nearby neighborhood. Mr. Johnson said the car’s open window presented an inviting place for the bees to take shelter until they could find a more permanent home … Click here to read more.
